Chapter 1

CONSTANTINO TERRA HAD LONG SINCE GIVEN UP throwing surprise parties for his daughter. She always knew they were coming and ruined the surprise. In retrospect, he thought, that should've been the first clue. But other evidence had also presented itself, and soon Constantino realized that his darling Nova was a telepath.

Were he someone else, Constantino would have been forced to give in to the inevitable and turn his daughter over to the military for proper training. But the Terras were one of the Old Families, descended from the commanders of the original colony ships that had brought humanity to this part of space from Earth generations ago. The Old Families did not turn their daughters over to anyone they didn't want to.

Her mother agreed. There was little else that Constantino and Annabella Terra agreed upon, not that they needed to agree on anything save that they remain married. Like most Old Family marriages, theirs was based on financial expediency, a union of two fortunes that would work better together than apart, and would also produce worthy heirs. Those heirs were created by an injection of Constantino's seed into Bella's body, thus saving him the distasteful task of sleeping with the wretched woman. He had his mistress for that, just as she had her jig, as was proper. Constantino had heard whispers among the servants that Bella was growing tired of her jig and seeking out other household employees for her sexual sport. But then, he'd also gotten word of similar rumors regarding him and his beloved Eleftheria, and he would never betray her trust. The mistress-husband bond—and the jig-wife bond, for that matter—was far too strong and important to the household for him to consider sundering it.

Instead of his daughter's spending her fifteenth birthday in some government facility being trained to use her psionic talents as a tool against the alien threats the Confederacy now faced, she was instead being thrown the finest party since… well, since the last time one of the Old Families' children had a birthday. It was a competition, in many ways, with each family throwing a more and more outlandish celebration to prove that they loved their children the most.

As a result, the domed roof of the penthouse atop the Terra Skyscraper was decked out as never before. The dome had been polarized to provide an optimum view of the city of Tarsonis without interference from the sun. (The Terra family's building was one of the few that had a virtually unobstructed view, matched only by that of Kusinis Tower and, of course, the Universal News Network Building.) A massive chandelier, six meters wide, hung in midair atop the dome, supported by state-of-the-art antigrav units guaranteed not to fail. (The guarantee was that Constantino would drive the manufacturer to complete ruin if it did fail.) Food from all across the Confederacy was laid out, as expected, but he actually managed to get his hands on Antigan buffalo meat and a limited supply of Saran pepper slices. The price for the latter two items was higher than the aggregate salaries of any ten of Constantino's employees, but it was worth it for his little girl.

All the important people were there—at least three representatives from each Old Family on Tarsonis, and a few from offworld—and UNN had dutifully sent all its gossip reporters, and even one of its news reporters, a woman named Mara Greskin. Constantino smiled at her presence. She must have cracked off somebody to get assigned to cover a birthday party. Usually such occasions were fodder only for gossip columns; news reporters considererd such assignments beneath them, which was why Greskin simply had to have annoyed somebody important—or gotten in UNN editor-in-chief Handy Anderson's doghouse.

Then again, if they're covering this, it means one less paranoid story about how aliens are going to wipe us out. It seemed all UNN was talking about these days were the horrors in the Sara system and the emergence of a strange alien threat. Constantino knew more than UNN did, of course—for example, that there were, in fact, two alien species fighting a war that the human race got caught in the middle of—which only made him worry more, especially since Arcturus Mengsk and his band of butchers in the Sons of Korhal were using the invasion as a propaganda tool to stir uprisings on planets from here to Antiga Prime.

In the face of all this, Constantino threw a party. It was, after all, his daughter's birthday, and he was damned if he'd let Mengsk or alien scum distract him from that.

Nova was becoming a woman. According to the girl's nurse, she had started what the nurse insisted on calling "her monthly time"—as if Constantino wasn't familiar with the female anatomy and its functions—and she had started to develop a woman's chest. Soon, the prepubescent disdain for the opposite sex would give way to hormonal imperatives. Which means an endless array of unsuitable suitors for my little girl.

In truth, Constantino was looking forward to it. There was nothing quite so satisfying as watching a young man trying desperately to impress one of the most powerful men in the Confederacy and failing miserably, that failure compounded by Constantino's holding him to an impossible standard. He'd already gone through it with Nova's older sister, Clara—now engaged to young Milo Kusinis—and was looking forward to it again with Nova.

Now, Nova stood in the center of the domed space, wearing a beautiful pink dress that had a ruffled neck, the white ruffles opening like a flower beneath her chin, a formfitting top, and a huge hoopskirt that extended outward half a meter in all directions and came to the floor. She walked with such grace and ease that the skirt's hiding of her feet made it seem as if she were floating when she walked. (Other girls achieved the same effect by attaching gliders to their shoes, unseen under the skirt's voluminous mass, but Nova, the darling girl, had always felt that to be cheating.) She wore very little makeup, simply enough to highlight her green eyes; her smooth skin needed no cosmetic enhancements, and so far the ravages of adolescence had not blemished her visage.

Her normally straight blond hair had been curled for the occasion and piled atop her head elegantly. Constantino made a mental note to apologize to Rebeka. He had doubted the hairdresser's word when she said Nova would look marvelous with curls; he should have known better after all these years. After all, Rebeka had made even Bella look presentable on more than one occasion.

All around them, the partygoers were partaking of the food on the tables, the servants ably refilling any plates that were in danger of emptying. The punch bowl remained three-quarters full no matter how much of it was imbibed—and, it seemed, old Garth Duke was determined to imbibe most of it himself; Constantino made a mental note to have Boris keep an eye on him in case he started undressing again—and the empty glasses and plates were whisked away. As ever, Constantino had the most efficient servants. If he ever had an inefficient one, he didn't have one for long.

There were those who expressed confusion at his employing of human servants—most of whom were members of the younger, newer rich, the so-called bootstrappers who had made their fortune during the boom a decade earlier. Robots, they pointed out, were more efficient, and you only had to pay for them once. Constantino generally just smiled and said he was old-fashioned, but the truth was, he owned Servo Servants, the largest robotics company in Confederate space, and he knew that you paid for them a lot more than once. Planned obsolescence and sufficiently inefficient mechanisms that required regular repairs were what kept SS in business.

Besides, he preferred to keep people employed. The more he employed, the fewer were infesting the bowels of the Gutter.

Nova glided over to him. "Daddy, you're always going on about how wonderful the servants are—but you never let them partake."

"I beg your pardon?" Naturally, if he was thinking about the servants, Nova would know that, even if only subconsciously.

"They're people too, Daddy—and they work so hard. Don't you think they deserve some of this fantastic Antigan buffalo a lot more than, say, him?"

She pointed over at Garth Duke, who had apparently decided that the punch bowl was a wading pool, and was taking off his boots. Constantino looked around, but Boris was already making a beeline before Garth could make a scene. Or, rather, more of one.

"Well?"

Turning back to look at his daughter, he found himself unable to resist her pleading green eyes. It wasn't the first time she had begged an indulgence for the servants, and she usually got what she asked for—a weakness of her father's that she hadn't taken nearly as much advantage of as she might have. Eleftheria said once that her telepathy probably allowed her to think of the servants as people rather than servants, since they had thoughts just like everyone else.

Copyright © 2006 by Blizzard Entertainment.